A trip to David Lynch's "Inland Empire" is like a vacation in Disney's Magic Kingdom compared with an excursion into the cinematic wilderness of self-taught "outsider" filmmaker Phil Chambliss, the so-called "Auteur from Arkansas."

Like Lynch, Chambliss -- a native of Locust Bayou, Arkansas -- is an intuitive filmmaker, but he operates at a less self-conscious and much more impoverished level. His short films are astonishing in their resourcefulness and utter distinctiveness, and -- perhaps most important -- they're just plain funny, in a truly weird way.

Three of Chambliss' shorts will be screened tonight in a must-see program at 7:30 tonight (Thursday, Aug. 3) at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art. Chambliss is scheduled to attend, to introduce the films and answer questions after the screening.